When and why moral exemplars fail to motivate intergroup reconciliation

In societies with collective memories of their group’s historical victimization, the modes of conflict resolution conventionally proposed in social psychology may be ineffective. The present study aimed to examine the effectiveness of moral-exemplar interventions. Moral exemplars are individuals who have risked some important aspects of their life to save lives of other social groups’ members. In two experimental studies (N total = 405), we tested the hypothesis that the presentation of stories of past ingroup or outgroup moral exemplars improves intergroup relationships. We also test the effects of prototypicality of the moral exemplars by manipulating the frequency of helping behavior in the perpetrator group. Also, we used open-ended question to investigate qualitatively how moral exemplars are viewed by participants. We have failed to find positive effects of moral-exemplar interventions. Our findings suggest that moral exemplars might even have adverse effects on intergroup attitudes. Qualitative analysis confirmed that the in-group moral exemplar can be used as an ‘alibi’ to justify the in-group’s transgressions, while the out-group moral exemplar was subtyped. Importantly, our findings do not invalidate, but complement the moral-exemplar intervention literature, by offering insights to future work with such interventions.